I wish it talked more about the actual logistics of manufacturing the watch. Is there a factory in china that will take your design and ship you a box of made watches?
This companies are no different than any other company in the history of business.
The only thing I can think of is the fact that in this case you can easily track the supplier and find out the "original price" of the item in a way that is very hard to do for let's say a pair of Nike shoes, but that's about it. Walmart is also full of these watches and you can believe they don't sell them for $5.
Or do you really think it costs Dell exactly $679,95 to build a laptop on one of their entirely owned factories where they manufacture and store every single component that goes into it? And, if you call them now they even give you a $200 discount because wouldn't you know it they just happened to have a "promotion" just for you?
There is no such thing as a free anything, yet when Apple offers FREE BEATS WITH EVERY MAC PURCHASE no magazine would dare to call them out on the obvious fact that both of these items are so "overpriced" that they can even afford to give one away "for free" and still come out ahead. They instead run "articles" praising what a great value the offer is and also you should act now before the sale is over.
This "article" could be written about any company, literally any company.
I think there's a difference between a company selling their goods at a profit and this not-quite-scam where a popup company not-quite-lies to their customers and dropships cheap products from somewhere else.
What do you think Apple does every time someone buys from their online store? They even give you a tracking number where you can follow the item in real time all the way from the FoxConn factory in CHINA directly to your door. It never even flys over Cupertino. I think you are gonna be very surprised when you find out how the commodities trade actually work.
Walmart sells the exact same watches. So does Amazon. Do you think they are a not-quite-scam too?
Keep in mind people are actually getting real watches. I don't know in what world that wouldn't make it a legitimate enterprise. And if you say it's because of their marketing, then you should really take a look at the copy on some car ads one day. Preferably Tesla.
You seem to have severely missed the point. Everbody knows that Apple manufactures their products in China. Everybody knows their supply chain ships them from warehouses around the world without ever visiting the US. That is nothing to do with any of this!
What the article is describing is as if Apple didn't design their own products, but instead shipped a barely working unbranded $16 android phone straight from an Alibaba seller when you tried to order an iPhone.
It's true that Amazon and Wallmart etc. have done sort-of this kind of thing for a long time (but slightly higher quality goods), but there's a huge difference between this and actual genuine proprietary goods. And even with Wallmart and Amazon, they don't usually make up a brand story to try and make buyers thinking they're getting a unique product from a high quality boutique designer and then selling them broken mass-produced trash.
Every company does this, even Apple. Every company outsources designs to third parties or buys the rights to an already made product to sell as their own. Apple does it with cables and maybe most famously the Apple branded iMac vesa mount. I'm sure they do it with other non core stuff too.
Entire car companies are nothing but rebadged models from another sister/partner brand. And oh boy you should read the heritage stories of those ghost brands. Audi takes a Porsche SUV, makes a few tweaks and boom, new Q7. Do they say that on their marketing or do they talk about how they spent years studying the needs of a family to be able to balance it with the desire for power and performance? Or how they finally achieved the perfect balance of sportiness and practicality?
Hasselblad and Leica, renowned for their photographic history and iconic designs sell nothing but rebadged cameras at the low end, at double the price of their counterparts of course. Do they redirect to Sony or Panasonic on their marketing pages?
Almost the entire fashion and makeup industries are like this.
These guys have bad quality control, ok, I'll give you that, but that just means they are bad at business. And It is not like their watches were such a fire hazard that all had to be banned from even entering an airplane.
Which is why I thought this point in the article was a great summation:
> Maybe this explains what’s so galling to people about the Folsom & Co. not-really-scam: It simply lays bare the categorical deception at the heart of all branding and retail. The different watch values are, in the strictest sense, speech acts: the watch is $29.99 because someone said it’s $29.99. It’s $29.99 because a certain person is wearing it on Instagram; it’s $29.99 because it’s photographed next to flannel and a Chemex. While “Bradley” of “Bradley’s men’s shop” may not be the most fleshed-out character, he – and the entire existence of Folsom & Co., Soficoastal, etc. – are examples of the now-household term, “brand storytelling.” And the internet makes it possible for anyone to tell any story, about anything, from anywhere.
It makes you realize that there really are tons of huge cases of products whose value is solely a result of marketing. My favorite current example is how YouTube influencers have completely upended the makeup industry, with each brand trying to convince you that this pallette of brown and red eyeshadow is imminently Superior to some other brown and red eyeshadow, when the input costs of all of them is literally under $1.
I think the key difference is in how truthful the marketing stories are. Apple/microsoft sell you a hypothetical future, while these watch "brands" sell a made-up past. Neither are 100% facts but one is clearly less savory than the other.
> Apple/microsoft sell you a hypothetical future, while these watch "brands" sell a made-up past.
You must be in marketing as that made absolutely no sense.
Do you think Apple's usb-c charging cable, which is currently listed on their site[1] for $19.99 costs them anywhere close to that to source? and at the same time tries to sell you a hypothetical future? wow, they do have good marketing.
If anything these watch brands, and I don't know why you put it in quotes as if to take legitimacy away from them but whatever, have more things in common with Apple than with someone selling the same watches such as "Walmart", as they are both trying to decouple the object from the sale and make it about the experience.
They all make stuff up, and when they don't they hide the information so you don't find out. That is why Apple will never say the price they pay for the leather Macbook sleeve they are currently charging $199 for[2]. I suspect very few people will buy it if they advertise right next to the price the 12 dollars it is actually costing them.
To be clear, I am not against any of this, anyone can charge whatever they want. Apple is certainly doing very well charging the prices they do. I am just impressed that people, most of all here, where people that actually build and sell products, actually price and order components and actually manage a supply chain, hang act so surprised to the fact that markup exists and that marketing is used to justify it.
And I am not defending this crappy watches or this shady company; I wouldn't buy a needle from them. All I am saying is that they are not any more shady than 95% of the "brands" out there that are actually owned by a mega conglomerate and never disclose it anywhere when trying to sell purified water to hipster college students on their way to protests against capitalism or whatever.
I chatted briefly with the author of this piece, who said that apparently the only people making money on these watches are online "marketing gurus" who will teach you how to get rich selling free watches.
It's absolutely true. I sell screen printed t-shirts that I design and print myself, as a hobby, and as such I spend some time trying to improve my sales. The facebook group I'm part of is lousy with people trying to sell these same cheap watches, jewelry, etc., complaining that they can get lots of traffic via Instagram but no sales. I would wager 50% of them at least will never make a single sale. The rest might make a few sales but never come close to a positive ROI.
> J. Crew now uses the brand for a line of high-end women’s clothing. Its marketing draws heavily on the age of the original Madewell, and J. Crew is fond of including “since 1937” under the logo. This is part of a larger effort to portray the Madewell brand in retrospect as a venerable, solid company known for craftsmanship and quality.
This is a really old strategy for getting credibility. Some scholars believe that Sun Tzu's Art of War is really much younger than what is claimed in the book. They believe that Sun Tzu focused on the book's supposed age and history, in order to give it more credibility.
The article is really not very much about the concept of a "free lunch" as more of a concept of how these pseudo-watch brands are laying bare the absurdity inherent in all fashion and branding.
I love this! I commented on this article about my own experience starting a "watch business" when it was originally posted about a year ago and it seemed to get a decent amount of votes and attention so I figure I'll re-post it below:
So a few years back I started a watch company in a similar way.
I think I was actually one of the first to do it, since when I started I couldn't find many competitors. I tried a million kinds of promotions, from "free, you just pay for shipping" to offering people discounts and referral codes.
I actually created my own watch designs (well, modifications of the face, case, and strap with the same Chinese movement.) Some of my improvements started to be used by the manufacturers.
I'm not at all invested in it anymore: I left the business after selling a substantial, but not massive number of watches and finding that it wasn't terribly profitable if you included the cost of advertising, shipping, and (most importantly) my own time.
My own "watch company" was more real in a few ways: watches that I did in fact design myself, shipped from my address in the US, and the quality of the watches was actually quite good. To this day I wear a watch from my company and it has held up to an incredible amount of abuse. I say this as someone who (used to) collect watches. I also was upfront about the cost of shipping and the watch itself - I might have, for example, a banner that says "Free 3-Day US Shipping" and then the price of the watch would be clearly labeled as $20, so people would know that they would only be paying a total of $20 for the watch. The prices varied a lot over time, from $10 to $40 per watch, but surprisingly my profit was never huge even though I only spent about $3 on the watch itself and $7 on shipping.
If anyone's curious about the whole thing (and lives in the Netherlands) I still have hundreds of these watches and I'd be happy to sit down over a coffee, tell my stories from the business and show the watches. (My email's in my profile.)
----
A few comments I'd like to add now, in 2018:
1) the watches (mine & that of other "companies") are of a surprisingly high quality in many cases. Not always, but often. For example, my watch has survived everything from bilge fluids to boiling water and it's the same cheap one I sold. Definitely far more durable than a comparable mechanical watch. I can see myself still using this thing 10+ years down the line. Furthermore, it actually does look classy and I get compliments on it. Most of the time, if you buy a cheap $3 Chinese alternative to something that's normally 10-1000x the price, it is neither beautiful nor durable.
2) The unexpectedly high quality of the watches is what fueled the explosion of sites IMO. You don't see "free earbuds", "free clock", or "free keyboard" sites, despite the fact that all 3 of these things are available for under $5 shipped from China. What I think happened is that people bought a watch on a whim, then it arrived and they realized "wow, this feels like a premium product!" Which it did! I was blown away when I first saw the quality level and instantly thought I should start a business. I suspect hundreds of other people had this same "eureka!" moment. When you get a $5 Aliexpress keyboard, it feels and looks like it cost $5 to make, and it excites nobody. Furthermore, Amazon makes a $13 keyboard with great reviews, and being Amazon it ships with Prime instead of "30-to-infinity day slow-boat-from-China shipping." Meanwhile, these watches felt like they cost at least $20 to make, and the only competitors for classy analog watches would be $50-100 or so, but they cost $3 (drop)shipped!
3) I highly doubt anyone made much money. When I started, dropshipping was not a thing the manufacturers offered (probably the reason why I was one of the first.) When manufacturers started offering dropshipping, these "businesses" exploded because you could suddenly run them entirely behind a laptop. The problem, of course, was that the number of such "companies" exploded, all competing for the same customers, Facebook ads, Google results, "underground marketing" spots, etc etc. That led to people getting a bit suspicious. If you saw one ad for a cool watch, maybe you were interested, but if you saw 20 in a week, all suspiciously similar, you'd think something's up.
DW is a totally different thing from these companies. I'd guess that DW's watches cost them each maybe $10 or so and selling for $80-200, vs. these watches costing $2-3 and "selling" for $10. They're not dropshipped, use different manufacturers than these companies and are generally upfront about the price (although you can get DW watches for far less than MSRP.)
DW's watches are naturally higher quality as well, although in my opinion this isn't worth the price tag. You can get Chinese "copies" of DW watches for $10-20 or so that are nearly identical. I wouldn't exactly recommend them, but to be honest I don't think the quality would be that bad, and they do generally look nice. That said, I think that even if you're not willing to go the Aliexpress route you can find an attractive alternative for maybe half the price.
Watch snobs (I am one) would never wear a DW watch, but most people aren't watch snobs. If you want watch snob opinions, you can check out the great /r/watches (caution, you may get drawn to mechanical watches from the beautiful photos... an expensive hobby to have)
>Instagram-savvy version of the fake watches one sees being hawked on the sidewalks of tourist cities.
I bought a "Tagheuer" watch on the streets of NYC for five dollars. At a glance, it looked OK but by the end of a day's wear it had completely self destructed.
I bought a 'Cartier' ladies quartz watch on the street in Bangkok for my wife twenty years ago for five USD and it still works. The band has lost some of its black colour but apart from that it works perfectly, keeps good time, and looks pretty good.
Don't know it it is true but the movement inside claims to be Swiss.
Dropshipping from China has a bad reputation but it can be done correctly and ethically. You can say you manufacture and ship from your partners in China, and you can pay for modifications, better QA like with stickers and number engraving and traceability, tracking in the shipment... even for some certified ISO processes.
Not defending what this fake stuff brands are doing, and they not only exist for watches but also for jewelry, leather bracelets, etc, etc... but just saying it's also comparable to what cheap shopping mall brands sometimes do with accessories and watches but adding renting and expensive place in the middle and marking up everything way more.
Feels and is a scam. Worst ever. I live in SF where it "claims to be" Why the hell is my shipment coming from Shanghai?
Going to miss my girlfriends gift date. WASTE of MONEY!
What kind of person gifts their girlfriend a free watch
> "25.
Maybe this explains what’s so galling to people about the
Folsom & Co. not-really-scam: It simply lays bare the
categorical deception at the heart of all branding and
retail. The different watch values are, in the strictest
sense, speech acts: the watch is $29.99 because someone
said it’s $29.99. It’s $29.99 because a certain person
is wearing it on Instagram; it’s $29.99 because it’s
photographed next to flannel and a Chemex. While “Bradley”
of “Bradley’s men’s shop” may not be the most fleshed-out
character, he – and the entire existence of Folsom & Co.,
Soficoastal, etc. – are examples of the now-household term,
“brand storytelling.” And the internet makes it possible
for anyone to tell any story, about anything, from
anywhere."
---
> " thateffingasian: Capitalism is making your own product and selling it. Capitalism isn't buying a piece of shit and telling people they're worth 25x the price, and lying to them about the actual value of the product. Your idea of capitalism is fucked up @soficoastal. Then the idiots blocked me, LOL. "
If Capitalism isn't buying shit and lying about it to sell it for higher, I don't know what Capitalism is. This is only a difference in degree, not kind.
When people start arguing generically about capitalism, socialism, communism, etc., that's the kind of tangent I'm talking about. Such internet forum discussions are extremely repetitive, which makes them off topic here. Plus they're flammable, plus they get dumber the longer they go on.
But the article itself is a critique of modern capitalism in general. Yes it was using watches to make the point, but it wasn't about watches.
Right from the outset this is made clear. The watch being talked about hasn't been donated to a museum of watches, it has been donated to a museum of capitalism. Even the title was chosen to make it entirely explicit where they were going with the article.
To then say that people shouldn't comment generically about capitalism regarding an article that is explicitly about capitalism, would seem a stretch too far in trying to keep this place neat and tidy.
I felt it was a bit like if everyone were to be restricted to discussing pencil manufacture, should Leonard Read's 'I, Pencil' be the topic of discussion. Yes, the text describes making pencils, but it isn't about pencils.
That's all fine but a comment that "capitalism [is] buying shit and lying about it to sell it for higher" is obviously unsubstantive. Unsubstantive plus generic is a bad combination for thoughtful discussion.
I don't think it's hard to see what we're trying to avoid here.
I agree that you have more of a point in saying that it could have had more substance to it, than in claiming that it is somehow a tangent from the article.
"If Capitalism isn't buying shit and lying about it to sell it for higher, I don't know what Capitalism is. This is only a difference in degree, not kind."
I'm neutral on the question in this case, but really, any discussion of "capitalism" that goes beyond chapter one, page one of an undegrad economics textbook covers the point that efficient markets are not deceptive markets. Participants are assumed to share equal information. HN's understanding of capitalist theory seems to begin and end at the phrase, "supply and demand", and everything that has a two-sided market is otherwise A-OK.
In this particular case, consumers are sort-of informed, but it's also a lot harder to be informed than it used to be. I'm someone who tries to find high-quality items, and even I screw up on a regular basis. I wouldn't fall for this one, though.
> Participants are assumed to share equal information.
That is not a requirement for efficiency. Unknowns are factored into the price as "risk".
For example, if I am selling you my car, I know its condition a lot better than you do. But, the more you are suspicious about its condition, the less you are willing to pay for it.
If you're a crackerjack programmer, my interview process is inexact, so I'm going to discount the salary offer based on how risky it is that you're not a crackerjack.
Sellers offer guarantees in order to reduce the customer's risk, and hence be able to sell at a higher price. Investment returns are based on the riskiness of it. I pay more at the post office for less risk of non-delivery. Insurance companies, of course, are an entire industry based on managing risk.
Risk is a perfectly normal characteristic of efficient markets, perfect or equal information is not required at all.
"That is not a requirement for efficiency. Unknowns are factored into the price as "risk"."
If someone is lying to you and you have no way of knowing it, there's no way to price the risk. Dishonesty can never be eliminated (that's software engineer pedantry) but it's always a drag on efficiency. People who don't trust each other don't engage in trade.
"Risk is a perfectly normal characteristic of efficient markets, perfect or equal information is not required at all."
Risk is a normal characteristic; there are always things you can't measure. Deception is not normal. It's why "capitalism" as practiced in countries where there are no stable legal systems tends to have lower levels of growth.
I stopped midway down the first page. But this quote is great, so I'll include it:
"Conjoint action is possible just in proportion as human beings can rely on each other. There are countries in Europe, of first-rate industrial capabilities, where the most
serious impediment to conducting business concerns on a large scale, is the rarity of persons who are supposed fit to be trusted with the receipt and expenditure of large sums
of money."
- John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848
edit - there is a core difference in definitions of trust going on here and it is basically the difference between the list of people you would lend money to vs the list of people you would buy something from. For certain trades, these lists are essentially the same, but for other trades they are very, very different.
> People who don't trust each other don't engage in trade.
They do all the time. It's just that the level of distrust is factored into the price. For example, you'll pay more money to buy a used car from a dealer than from a random person, and you'll pay more to buy from a reputable dealer. And it's why there are such things as cashier's checks, wire transfers, and escrow services.
> Deception is not normal.
It is normal, and it is factored into the price as "risk".
> It's why "capitalism" as practiced in countries where there are no stable legal systems tends to have lower levels of growth.
Of course. An unstable legal system means high risk, high risk means adverse prices, and as such lower levels of growth.
> It's why "capitalism" as practiced in countries where there are no stable legal systems tends to suck.
Indeed, countries without stable legal systems don't practice "capitalism", as defined e.g. by Adam Smith's work. At their best, they practice crony capitalism-- but that's not quite the same thing!
> efficient markets are not deceptive markets. Participants are assumed to share equal information.
Unfortunately this does not exist outside the textbook; there's an entire field devoted to information economics (Akerloff, Stiglitz et al). And then there's the brilliant "markets are efficient iff P=NP" paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1002.2284.pdf
Anyone who has ever bothered to watch an ad break will be less than surprised by this.
Given that we actually have markets where people deceive each other pretty much all of the time and justify the lying as a matter of business principle, perhaps we should study those instead.
Don't get me wrong, these fictional markets are interesting, but a lot of time seems to have been wasted looking at them instead of looking at the actual economy.
> .. covers the point that efficient markets are not deceptive markets. Participants are assumed to share equal information.
Are 'efficient markets', defined by not being deceptive, and all participants having equal information, a requirement to call something 'capitalism'? Does that mean capitalism has never been tried? How long can such a system last, when it is in the financial interest of a large part of the participants to make the markets less 'efficient', so they can extract a higher price for less work?
>I'm neutral on the question in this case, but really, any discussion of "capitalism" that goes beyond chapter one, page one of an undegrad economics textbook covers the point that efficient markets are not deceptive markets. Participants are assumed to share equal information.
So every discussion of "capitalism" that goes beyond chapter one is based on fairy tales?
No, it's just that markets where deception is common are not "efficient". A deceptive market can only result in complete unraveling, or exploitation of the honest, non-deceptive players (which is per say inefficient). There's no other possibility.
It is irksome that people lay all of the horrors of the world at the door of “Capitalism” when people have been scamming, exploiting, and generally screwing each other over since the beginning of time. Capitalism is something that emerged in the Eighteen Century. The word means something and to ascribe every immoral or amoral act that aggrandizes someone to Capitalism is an act of intellectual vandalism. And to forstall the karma-harvesting mosquitos about to descend on my comment with a smug “But Capitalism is not therefore an unalloyed good!” reply, I’m not saying Capitalism isn’t without its problems.
That's not a very charitable interpretation of the position, which I see to be along the lines of the fact that the economic mode of production in any given period reaches past mere individual transactions and into our whole mode of being, influencing everything from politics to art to religion.
The criticisms of capitalism, at least from a scientific standpoint, are not that people under capitalism are doing bad things, it's either that (i) under previous or potentially future modes of production there would be little or no incentive to do those things, (ii) capitalism has exacerbated the degree to which the behavior persists. The second part of the criticism is that capitalism is a class society, and thus rife with the antagonism that comes with class society in the form of "contradictions", which manifest themselves in capitalism as the contradiction of abstract and concrete labour, use-value and exchange value, capital and labour, price and value, culture and the commodity etc.
> The second part of the criticism is that capitalism is a class society
The modern middle-class society of the present day would quite simply be utterly unrecognizable to 19th-c. theorists of "capitalism [as] a class society". In fact, they would find that most, if not all, of the policy goals that they originally set for themselves have been achieved, in a market economy! The Chinese leadership understands this quite well, BTW; the above consideration plays a significant role in their understanding of what a "socialism with Chinese characteristics" should look like.
The fact that the class structure has been complicated does not mean it has disappeared, nor does the increase in class mobility mean that classes have disappeared. It's worth noting that it's not only the 19th century theorists who thought of capitalism as class society, but relatively recent ones too. The notion that the "concrete aims" of Marx and company (if you're referring to them) have been fulfilled is farcical - they didn't only call for an increase in living conditions for non-capitalists, they called for a society different in kind, not just degree. I'd be interested in how core ideas such as "abolition of the value-form" play into a system to which they are antagonistic (market economy).
A lovely quote from the 60s:
“If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population.” (Herbert Marcuse)
And from the same person:
“Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production.”
Isn't that a feature of only the final stage of social evolution according to Marx? The one that Marx calls "communism" (not to be confused with e.g. "communist countries" or "communist parties", as a reference to their politics). A close relative to the communist stage wrt. the theory of market economies would be what we call a "post-scarcity economy" - except that it's not really a 'core idea' in any sense. It might or might not happen at some point in the future, but a market theorist has no need for that hypothesis.
I'd love to comment about the remark you quote regarding the "preservation of the Establishment" and how ironic it sounds today, but to do that I'd have to mention some quite uncomfortable facts about present-day political dynamics, which would take us very far from the subject, and deep into partisan controversy. Sorry!
A new set because, while class isn't new, the specifics of the class structure are?
BTW: Why "contradiction"? It looks like Marx chose that word in order to make the fall of capitalism look inevitable - it has contradictions, so it must be self-inconsistent, so it must fall, right? But it looks to me that what Marx is describing is just the differences that occur in any society. In what way are they truly contradictions (in the normal sense of the word)?
A new set because history has developed in such a way to generate new contradictions - but yes, the new class structure is at least partially a result of changes in technology (though some Marxists disagree with me on this).
Contradictions doesn't mean internally inconsistent in dialectical sense; Marxism is famous for its application of dialectical logic, in which opposites oppose each other while maintaining unity which must resolve itself, rather than a binary opposition (i.e we must have one or the other) or a binary inclusive-or (which has no potentiality for resolution).
The point of contradictions isn't to say that society will fall because of them (that would be a vulgar reading of the concept and a scientifically untenable one) but rather that any new society must in some way answer to the contradictions, or arise out of their development or increase in intensity. For instance, the contradiction between use-value and exchange-value is only heightened with capitalism, but the contradiction between capital and labour is obviously new with capitalism. By specifying contradictions, they can be thought of (philosophically speaking) and potentially overcome (practically speaking). One such contradiction which has been present in all societies thus far is between freedom and necessity, which Marx claimed would be resolved with the advent of Communism.
I can't speak for the impression Marx wanted to give about the downfall of capitalism from his word choice, but I can say that the dialectical mode of presentation was admitted by Engels to have been rather outmoded even by the time Capital I was published. Contradiction in the dialectical sense doesn't imply inconsistency, it implies the functioning unity of opposites. At best, Marx's use of contradiction implies the possibility to overcome, but I don't know about the necessity. Herbert Marcuse, a renown dialectician, didn't seem to think that the contradiction would be resolved, and Adorno didn't seem to think that the contradiction would resolve positively.
Either way, I'm not going on the defensive here, since Marx's commitment to the scientific method should be reflected in Marxism's ability to be self-critical. Few other "sciences" would be so happy to cast doubt on the logical axioms under which they operate.
Why is there a contradiction between use-value and exchange-value? Exchange-value is just other peoples' use-value (with some exceptions like money itself).
> ... I can say that the dialectical mode of presentation was admitted by Engels to have been rather outmoded even by the time Capital I was published.
Is there a Marxism that doesn't depend on the dialectic? Or just on the dialectical mode of presentation? It has always annoyed me that if you don't believe the dialectic, there seems to be no way to even talk to a Marxist. Am I mistaken?
More generally, it seems to me that Marxists would communicate much more effectively if they used technical words much less in the process of presenting their ideas, at least in non-academic settings. Most people don't want to have to learn a bunch of technical jargon in order to understand the ideas of some group - especially a group that they consider to be not only fringe, but almost certainly already refuted. Few people have enough time to willingly take on such a task.
That's precisely the contradiction. For instance, a house satisfied a social need or want (to keep someone protected from the elements), which is what gives it value to begin with, after all, nothing can have value without first being an object of demand. But strangely, people buy houses to "use" their exchange value, i.e as an asset. Most houses were never designed to be imbued with the sort of labour which makes them valuable as assets, but rather the sort of labour which makes them useful as actual usable homes. In fact, the focus on exchange value means that houses will deteriorate while people collect rent.
Exchange value appears as use-value, but that doesn't make it essentially use-value; while marginalism would say that I sell a product because I "value" (verb) the money more than the product, Marx says that when an object is to be exchanged, I see no use-value in it at all. But of course it has social use-value, because it can fulfill wants and needs.
"The form of use-value is the form of the commodity’s body itself, iron, linen, etc., its tangible, sensible form of existence. This is the natural form (Naturalform) of the commodity. As opposed to this the value-form (Wertform) of the commodity is its social form."
The question Marx wanted to answer was why the actual concrete form of the product appears in the relation to others (for instance, you can't say "20 yards of linen are worth 20 yards of linen", you must say they it is worth "1 coat" or "20 cwt. iron" etc.). The contradiction is that qualitatively different things can be quantitatively the same in value, but this quantitative measurement necessitates a differentiation in quality.
>Thus through the relative value-expression the value of the commodity acquires, first, a form different from its own use-value. The use-form of this commodity is, e.g. linen. But it possesses its value-form in its relation of equality with the coat. Through this relation of equality the body of another commodity, sensibly different from it, becomes the mirror of its own existence as value (Wertsein), of its own character as value (Wertgestalt). In this way it gains an independent and separate value-form, different from its natural form. But second, as a value of definite magnitude, it is quantitatively measured by the quantitatively definite relation or the proportion in which it is equated to the body of the other commodity.
>Is there a Marxism that doesn't depend on the dialectic? Or just on the dialectical mode of presentation?
Yes, John Elster, G.A. Cohen, Roberto Veneziani, Andrew Kliman, Anwar Shaikh, Nobuo Okishio, David Laibman, Naoki Yoshihara and other "analytical Marxists" have at least attempted to either explain Marx and capitalism without such dialectical concepts as value, for instance the theory of hitsorical materialism, or they have attempted to concentrate on the purely quantitative theory of value which can be neatly expressed in neoclassical economic terms (game theory and matrix algebra) to the end of various competing theories which are readable to economists rather than philosophers. The success to which they excise the "mysterious" parts of Marx is up for debate, and I think that a lot is lost in analytical formulations thus far - but the attempts are admirable and perhaps fertile for further research.
I agree with what you're saying on simplicity, but Marx's writings are deep and many-layered and open to several interpretations and re-formulations, to the point where it's hard to speak of him without advancing your favourite interpretation.
Here is one definition of capitalism: Reinvesting the profits in the enterprise, to make it more efficient, larger, or better in some other way. That started in 12th Century Italy, and perhaps also in China's 11th Century Industrial Revolution.
(China could have had an iron-based industrial revolution long before Europe. But the mandarins saw that some lower-class people were getting rich, and so they shut it down by force.)
Also: Colonialism is an evil of capitalism? The Roman Empire did something very like colonialism. The Spanish in the 1500s weren't exactly capitalists, either.
Capitalism is where the gatekeepers on what can be produced and by whom, control through (typically hereditary) wealth and then use that position to capture the majority of and wealth produced (or wealth harvested in the case of unproductive business such as rent seeking). Dishonesty is not a necessary part but certainly occurs in any market where it is favored.
Incidentally, notions of supply and demand are part of a free market which does not necessarily have to be run by capital.
If scammy, semi-fraudulent watch sites constitute our dystopia, I’m relieved.
These scams are as old as commerce. Just more easily propagated using modern tools. They’re the reason Consumer Reports and reveiw publications exist. Caveat emptor.
https://imgur.com/a/6CNO8